


Breath is of Little Consequence

by veausy



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cliche, F/M, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, First Kiss, Fluff, Freeform, One Shot, Slice of Life, Spies & Secret Agents, Vignette, read also: canon non-compliant, read: they are both adults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veausy/pseuds/veausy
Summary: El and Mike's first kisses. Several.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 11
Kudos: 123





	Breath is of Little Consequence

**Author's Note:**

> For Vic, my favorite reader of any time, any medium, and any fandom. Thank you for all that you've done for me; I appreciate you in ways you cannot imagine.  
> \- Santa

**Distraction Kiss**

The edge of the rooftop is only several footsteps away. If she leaped, El could grab onto the fire escape lining the side of the opposite building, slithering down until she dropped to the asphalt below. But the risk is too high, considering how creaky the metal looks, and how rusted, even in the darkness of the late evening, hardly helped by the scant light pollution. She heaves a silent breath and glances around herself once more.

Faint shouts reach her from inside the building, probably traveling up through the broken glass of the window to the rooms just beneath her feet that she’d vaulted into. She’s running out of time.

A church bell starts ringing somewhere uptown, eerie and slow. She looks up at the moon and down at the ground so many floors below, chewing on her lip. Any longer and she’s dead meat.

Steady, ginger steps take her to the lip of the building, and she eyes the drop down.

A sharp shout behind her makes her gasp. Two masked men are giving chase, and they’re aiming guns at her. She’s out of time.

With hardly a thought in her head, El walks back as many steps as she dares and gives herself a running start off the roof, grunting as her body’s tossed through the air toward the fire escape. Her ribs smack roughly against the railing as she grabs hold of a ladder, swinging dangerously with the squeak of terrifyingly shoddy engineering. After granting herself a single gasp of relief, she starts scaling down, glancing from the corner of her eyes at the men who’ve reached her previous spot, and who are now also backing up into a sprint to try to follow her. It makes her grimace and skid carelessly, trying to accelerate up her descent.

Once her feet hit solid ground, she runs, past the fuming vents along the side of the alley, past the garbage bags discarded in the corner. Her every muscle aches. Behind her, the fire escape moans again from the bodies that have landed on it in hot pursuit.

It’s as she starts to turn the corner and into the fairly busy street that she smacks straight into a hard chest. A car horn bleats somewhere down the block, and the streetlights so high in the dark sky seem too faint suddenly, making her vision tunnel and her adrenaline spike. She lands on her ass without any idea of how she got there, so sudden was their collision, but as she stares up at the man who’s in her way, she knows she's screwed herself. Too slow to flee, too indiscreet with her strategy. They must have been tailing her for hours.

“Fuck,” she mutters, jumping to her feet once more when she hears shoes hit the ground in the alley. She shoves the guy – who’s staring down at her with apologies falling from his lips, his hoodie hanging loosely around his skinny frame, his hair a matted mess – into the little inlet of the shop entrance they’re loitering next to. He follows willingly, mouth clamping shut when she gives him a sharp look.

Tugging her motorcycle helmet off, she throws it into the neighboring trash can, brushing her hand roughly through her hair a few times, and then unzips her jacket, tossing it as well. Beneath it she’s in only a tight-fitting sleeveless tank, but it’ll have to do. Freezing October chill be damned.

The footsteps grow louder, closer, so she slams herself back against the shop door, dragging the guy in by his hoodie pockets, and then slaps two hands on his nape, pulling. He comes so easily she almost wants to laugh, but then her lips are fitting themselves over his plump ones, delving deep instantly, and yet again he puts up no semblance of a fight.

Still on high alert, she sets his hands on her hips and moves so that their chests are grazing, and he makes a soft sound of surprise that makes her want to coo. While he’s got his eyes squeezed shut, she stares over his shoulder from the darkness they’re shrouded in, watching two shadows slip past them without even a second glance. For the fourth time this month, she thanks her lucky stars that these new muscle pigs hired to terminate her are almost too stupid to function.

Once they’re out of sight, she ducks away from the guy attached to her face, wiping her lips with the back of one wrist and panting quietly.

“Ha-uh,” he says intelligently, two hands in his own hair, seeming shocked by his own carelessness.

“Thanks,” El tells him, voice hushed and eyes jumpy. The street is not as busy as it could be, on a Friday night, but busy enough that she knows their voices won’t be noticed. Still, she’s not free of them yet. Not until her apartment door shuts and locks behind her and she removes all the weapons she’s stashed on her person.

“Who – who are you?”

El squints up at him. “Don’t think you need to know that anymore.” When he only blinks at her, she tilts her head. “Thanks for that. Your gum tastes good.”

Two large eyes continue to watch her as she fixes her clothes, shivering just slightly in the cold. At her third shudder, the guy unzips his hoodie and throws it over her shoulders gallantly, though he seems mostly preoccupied by his confusion. “Are you okay?”

El pulls the edges of the hoodie around herself and carefully steps around him, entering the street. It’s clear, but a sharp gust of wind has her grimacing as all of her hair flies into her face. She chuckles lowly, and the innocent civilian laughs with her, besotted by her mystery. “Have a good night,” she tells him, starting off toward the police station some streets away. Silence follows her as she listens to the click of her own shoes on the pavement.

“Mike,” a voice calls weakly behind her, strangled.

El turns mid-step and continues to walk backwards, eyeing her helper. He’s sticking out of the shop’s inlet, floppy hair waving in the harsh breeze, nose a bright pink.

“I’m Mike.”

El pauses, boots placed neatly side-by-side, shivering under the hoodie as cars speed past. The dark sky mixes with the cheap streetlights to make everything look sepia-toned, dreamlike. Then, she smiles brightly at him. Mike smiles back. She turns around and keeps walking. Over her shoulder, she shouts, “I didn’t ask!”

Just before she turns the corner, she thinks she hears him laugh.

\--

**Sparring Kiss**

“Fuck, fuck, I’m trapped. This is a dead end,” El mutters, out of breath. She’s reached the end of the bank vault’s widest corridor, faced with only a blank wall and a stone bench. “Get me out.”

There’s static in her in-ear, and she touches it carefully, eyes roving over every darkened corner of the space she finds herself in, seeking any possible place to hide. Near the trash can is a small alcove, which could possibly hide three-quarters of her body if she makes sure not to breathe. “There’s two following you at fifty meters,” comes the tinny voice in her ear. “Can you fit in the garbage container?”

El winces, eyeing the big receptacle with distaste, and approaches it, gazing into its depths. The bag inside is more than halfway full. Even if she could remove it in time, it would be too conspicuous to place outside the metal bin for no apparent reason. “Fuck,” she mutters again, slipping toward the alcove, lining herself up with it and trying to make herself as small as possible. It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. She’s so screwed, it’s not going to w –

A rough hand lands on her chest, grabbing her by the lapels of her jacket and slamming her into the floor. She lets out a soft sound as all the air leaves her, staring with dawning terror at the face above her. He’s got big, round eyes beneath the mask that shields his face, eyelashes long and full. “Really bad at hide-and-seek, huh?” he asks her, voice muted behind the muzzle.

El gasps desperately, trying to breathe as she gathers her bearings. “Get yo-your hand off me,” she tells him, eyes shutting rapidly.

He chuckles, but the weight of him disappears. When she looks up again, he’s backed away, standing over her at a small distance. At her frown, he shrugs. “Well? Get to your feet, princess.”

El clambers up, cursing the utter silence in her in-ear, and pulls her gun from its holster to point it straight at him. “For what?”

His own machine gun is swinging lazily at his side, and he rolls his eyes at her motions. “Don’t bring a gun to a knife fight. I just want the flash drive.”

El scoffs. “What, you think you’ll say the magic word and I’ll pass it over?”

Her opponent sighs deeply, throwing his gun and the ammunition hanging from his waist to the floor, raising an eyebrow at her. She scoffs again. He tugs off the mask and throws it to the side. “I think you’re as tired of harboring it as we are of chasing it, aren’t you?”

The scowl on El’s face deepens. “That’s a weird conjecture. This is my job.”

“And this is mine. So can you please lower the gun?”

El eyes him over the barrel she’s keeping between them, clocking how easily he could pull a knife or a grenade from his uniform if needed. “No, I don’t think so.” She throws a glance down the corridor they’d both come from and tilts her head into the pitch blackness that meets her there. “Where are the other goons? I know there’s more of you. Are they watching us?”

“No,” the guy says, irritated, a bit like a teenager talking back to his parent. “They’re clearing the rest of the building. I’m a little sick of tailing you, Hopper.”

“What a coincidence: I’m sick of having you tail me.”

A gloved hand extends between them, and El stares at it dubiously. The fingers flex playfully. “Give it to me.”

“No,” she protests, indignant.

“Come on,” he goes on, and she can’t tell what’s happening anymore, “we’re all sick of this, aren’t we?”

“N –“

Before she can get any other sound out, the guy disarms her, throwing her handgun at the wall with a clang, at the same time that his fingers tangle in her hair and tug her in, mouths mashing. She makes a sound of protest, but his other arm smooths over her waist and gently settles her up against his own long torso. When her eyes flutter open, she finds his own closed, tongue already warring with hers. He tastes like tangerines.

“Mph,” she grunts, shoving him away and wiping her lips with the back of one hand. “The fuck.”

The guy wiggles his eyebrows and slinks away, grabbing his weapons from the floor. Startled, she rushes for where her own gun had landed, trying to beat him to it – but he only grabs his mask and walks away, still facing her. She’s crouched on the ground with her palms flat on the tiles of the floor, watching him in the bleak light of the nearby office lamps. He grins at her with perfect, white teeth. “I’m Mike,” he tells her. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

El’s jaw drops. “I didn’t ask.”

As Mike finishes arming himself, his free hand comes up with a small, glinting piece of metal in between two fingers. Heart freezing, El slaps her hands over her waist, feeling for the secret pocket which is now conspicuously empty. Instantly, she gives chase, but Mike only chuckles, giving her a last glimpse of his carelessly amused face before the mask slides over it, and he disappears into the depths of the corridor. El trails him through the building, but eventually realizes she is completely alone.

When she slumps over with her hands on her knees in the middle of an archway between two wide corridors, she thinks she hears the echoing ghost of his laugh.

\--

**Fake Relationship Kiss**

“Another touchy relative of the bride, two-o’clock,” Mike mutters, fixing the collar of his suit jacket and taking a sip from his champagne flute.

El glances to the side, clocking the old lady approaching them, and plasters a smile on her face. “Quit fidgeting,” she grits through her teeth, and watching Mike suppress an angry sigh. It gives her some satisfaction.

“Oh, dear,” the old lady greets them, small and crooked and wrinkled, hands rising high in the air to slap onto the sides of Mike’s jaw and tug. He comes unwillingly, smiling tightly down at his aunt, who kisses his cheeks with a very wet sound and goes off about some or other appetizer giving her nausea. El tunes them out, standing politely close but not enough to come off as intrusive, keeping watch over the rest of the guests, who seem to be milling about stupidly and with no real objective. Such is the case with most civilians, it seems. She hates it.

“And who is this?” a voice asks shrilly. El’s so busy tightening the crimson belt on her creamy-caramel sundress that she doesn’t realize it’s been asked directly of her. She glances up to find Mike watching her with a strange look on his face and his aunt blinking at her half-politely.

“I’m El,” she tells them both, giving Mike an irritable look. As she shakes the aunt’s hand, she explains that she’s been dating Mike for several months now, and this is the first time his family is meeting her.

“Oh, dear,” the aunt says, and it seems to be a space filler for her, as she veers off on a tangent about Nancy’s own secret boyfriends back in the day, when she’d have them come into the house through her bedroom window and then she'd pretend to be eating a whole large cheese pizza by herself. “Several months, you say?”

El realizes her mistake, because a girl would know the exact number of months, but this whole operation was so shoddily put together that they didn’t even have time work on much of the detail. Hoping Mike shuts the hell up, she nods and elaborates, “Six and a half.”

The aunt’s eyes widen. “More than half a year!” She turns her shocked, wrinkly face to her nephew, slapping his chest gently. “That’s a darn long time to be keeping this _beauty_ from us! And I haven’t seen you two even share a kiss all evening!”

Mike blushes with surprising authenticity, ducking his head and rubbing his nape almost like he’d rehearsed it after watching a movie. “Uh – “

“Give her a kiss, Mikey, it’s only right.”

“Oh, Aunt Cla –“

“Give her a kiss, Mikey,” comes the plaintive demand, and El sneaks a mirthful glance at the old lady holding both of Mike’s hands in her own as she pleads with him.

A passing stranger halts near them at the same time. “Who’s Mike kissing?”

The aunt swivels, catching sight of the curly-haired man and clasping her hands in front of her chest theatrically. “Oh, Dustin, honey, did you know Mikey’s been hiding this lovely girl from us all for over half a year?”

Dustin blinks up at El, then turns squinted eyes on Mike, who avoids them. “No way.”

“I think when it’s been that long, it’s just not fair. Mikey should kiss this girl for what he’s put her through.”

El cracks a grin at that, genuinely amused. Her "boyfriend" scowls at her.

“Yeah, kiss her, Mike,” Dustin says, loudly. It attracts even more attention from neighboring guests, and soon they’re surrounded by a crowd of spectators for a kiss that may or may not happen, and El in particular is being ogled like some sort of biological specimen.

“Okay!” Mike shouts, hands rising in the air in defeat. He steps closer to El and sets a single hand high on her waist. As the crowd hushes, he leans in and pecks her once platonically on the lips, pulling away instantly with a sharp smile at his aunt.

She looks bemused. “That’s not a kiss, Mikey.”

Dustin, who’s already got his arm across the old lady’s shoulders, nods. “Yeah, give her a real kiss.”

Mike blanches. “Wh – I –“

El’s got her own hands clasped in front of her, standing primly in her wispy dress under the warm February sun. The grass under their feet is healthy enough that her heels sink into dirt every time she shifts, so she’s been frozen in one spot for several minutes, smiling at everyone benevolently like the unassuming, unpresumptuous girlfriend she’s meant to be, utterly at peace with everything and willing to let Mike do whatever he wants.

When what seems like half of the entire family starts chanting, Mike turns red and steps closer, face to face with El and gazing down at her with eyes that seem stormy. She stares back. When he leans in and kisses her deeply, the crowd oohs and ahhs and cheers, and El can feel both of Mike’s hands on her hips, burning through the satiny material of her dress. His lips are full and soft, and his height makes them both tire of their respective poses quickly, but El relaxes so that her back is slanted a bit, letting Mike lean into her body.

By the time they come up for air, the crowd has started to disperse, sated, and El wipes at her mouth absently, catching the gleam of her lipstick on her skin and watching the color in Mike’s cheeks darken. He turns away from her and eyes the tables where most of his friends are seated, probably longing to join them on this one and only chance he’s gotten to be reunited with his hometown for two days. Alas, she doesn’t let him get distracted, grabbing his elbow and whispering to him in semblance of a besotted lover. “Get a grip,” she says.

He nods once, staring at the grass around them, and she lets him stay quiet as he remembers and resigns himself to the reason for their presence here today. Nancy laughs near the stage, hugging a smiling Holly, and El wonders if she’s ever heard Mike laugh so happily at all.

\--

**Something Big is About to Happen Kiss**

They’re sprinting toward the exit, shoes slapping against the cement floor and guns at the ready, fleeing from the explosive noise following them as a stampede of armed men gives chase.

El drops to the ground and rolls through first, managing to tug Mike out bodily from beneath the shutting door just before it crushes him, tugging him to his feet as they run from the facility and throw looks over their shoulders at the unpleasant and eerie silence that surrounds them.

“There, the opening,” Mike pants, pointing to a clump of thorny bushes gathered around a small trail worn by dozens of feet.

El ducks through, smashing branches away from her face, and gasps when she reaches a cliff’s edge, freezing in place. Mike's chest grazes her back when she catches up, and the silence feels heavy.

“Fuck,” Mike grunts, and the word makes the hair on her nape shift gently. She shivers.

“Do we jump?”

From the vicinity of the door they’d escaped through comes a loud clang and another explosion of footsteps and noises, aggressive, feral. El shifts wide, bloodshot eyes to Mike, who studies her calculatingly. His nose is red, like it often gets, and his hair is messy, and she can’t believe he’s the last thing she’ll ever see. She’s wanted that for too long to know how to make the acceptance of its reality fit inside of her heart. She breathes unevenly and waits for his response.

“Yeah,” he breathes finally. “We gotta jump.”

“Will it – “ she leans to the side and glances down at the water that will greet them. It is still and cold and covered with what looks like a thin sheet of ice. This fall is going to hurt. Not more than others that she’s fared (like that of her heart, for one), but enough. She’ll be lucky to escape without broken bones.

“We’ll be fine. Tuck in your chin, you know what to do. Our suits should sustain a lot of the hit, and we only have seconds left. It’s either that or they lock us up in there and it’s over.”

El nods, shivering, more from nerves now than cold, but she wishes she had a hoodie to wrap around herself anyway, something soft, worn, real. The plasticky squeak of their suits is foreign and meaningless. Mike’s been her guide, her protector, for so long – she’s afraid of landing down there alone. She’s afraid of surviving the fall alone.

“Okay,” she says, approaching the edge. The shouts behind them grow closer, the smacks of feet on the ground more numerous. She inhales deeply, heart thundering so hard that she’s shocked it hasn’t cracked her chest open. “Okay.”

“Hey,” Mike mumbles, one hand wrapping gently around her wrist and tugging her back. She bumps against his chest. “Hey,” he repeats, and then his eyes close and he dips down, kissing her tenderly. His soft, plush lips move over hers for seconds that feel like years, and this is what they mean when they say some moments seem to stretch for entire lifetimes, especially when it seems like they’re the last moments you’ll ever have. El’s hand curls around his cheek and she sighs into his mouth, trembling. When he pulls away, she feels so, so alone. He tangles their hands together and steps up to the cliff’s edge beside her. “On three.”

The air rushing past her body feels insane, unlike anything she’s ever known. The fingers wrapped around hers feel like they’re being tugged out of her hold, but she holds on so tightly that her bones creak. She’s not going to land there alone. She refuses to survive alone. Just before her body hits the surface, she thinks she hears him laugh.

\--

**Requited Unrequited Kiss**

It’s a nondescript coffee shop, bustling with the lunchtime crowd of the nearby college’s students, and El stands at the pickup counter with her arms crossed, studying her surroundings quietly. Her cell phone is utterly silent, no emails from Central Intel, no messages about a new mission file coming to her desk. Her burner phone is burning a hole in her pocket, but she knows that if even a single ping came to it, she’d be sliding it out before the ping even stopped.

When she sees Mike’s lanky form through the glass lining the coffee shop’s front, she relaxes a bit, back bending a little as she lists against the wall. The roar of coffee machines is loud, but her heartbeat is louder, and she swallows thickly several times before Mike even manages to locate her inside the shop.

She smiles faintly at him, and he beams back. He’s trimmed his hair from the past-shoulder-length mop it was a couple months ago, and the tresses look healthy, shiny, and it warms her from the inside. His freckles are brighter than normal, more numerous.

“You ordered already?”

“Yeah,” El smiles. “Got yours, too.”

Mike leans against the wall beside her, arms crossing to mirror her, and asks lowly, “Now, how do you know what I want?”

El looks up at him. The space between their faces is scant, and she can see every shade of brown in his eyes. Her breath hitches a few times as they stare at one another, and he seems to pick up on her weirdness enough to ignore her answering silence.

So she twists, arms dropping to her sides to fiddle with the seams of her jeans, and one of her shoulders presses into the wall as she faces Mike fully. “Listen,” she tells him urgently, quietly. Mike turns, too, mirroring her again. His own hands drop into the pockets of his pants, but she knows it’s because he clenches them when he’s nervous and his training’s beaten into him the instinct to hide his vulnerabilities.

“El?” he prompts, when she spends too long staring at the floor.

“I asked Byers to transfer me.”

Mike’s eyes widen and his face loses its color, making his freckles look stark. El’s chest seizes. “What?”

“I can’t, uh, work with you anymore. I had her switch me to Sinclair’s unit.”

Mike swallows, staring at her unseeingly. “But – what did I do? We’ve had so many good missions lately, I –“

“No, it’s not that, it’s not you,” El mumbles back, bringing her hands up to her face and rubbing at it wearily. Mike grabs hold of her wrists and tugs them down.

“Then what?”

“I –“ she cuts herself off, trying to read Mike’s feelings from his face. But he’s never been the kind of to wear them so close to the surface. She only knows about him what he wants her to know, and even though he’s effortfully made himself into an open book for her in the last year, it’s not clear that this is something he’d jump into with both feet.

“El, what,” he grits out, big round eyes stuck on hers.

“I love you,” she tells him, rushed, hushed. “I love you, and I’m a liability. I can’t work with you.”

There’s a long, painful silence. After several seconds of staring at Mike and being stared at back, she drops her eyes and tries to step away, but Mike’s wide, warm hands are still around her wrists, and he won’t let her budge.

“Mike,” she whispers. “It’s –“

“Oh, thank God,” he lets out in a rush. El freezes, gaping. Before anything else happens, Mike’s lips are on hers, urgent and harsh and trembling. He smells faintly of tangerines. “Oh, thank God,” he repeats, releasing her hands and tugging her in by the shoulders, right into a tight embrace. Her cheek presses against his chest and she closes her eyes. “Me too, El, me too, fuck,” he grunts, pushing her away and gazing into her face before pulling her in again, smile wide and bright.

The rest of the day is a big blank. The last thing she remembers from it is the sound of his laugh.

\--

**Cooking Together Kiss**

Something on the stove is sizzling.

El shuts the door behind her and makes a face, tiptoeing toward the kitchen doorway. With an open lack of a chef to accompany them, there are vegetables on the cutting board and a pot with steam coming out of it, the source of the sizzle. Her bag is sliding off her shoulder, so she sets it down on the floor beside her feet and looks around. “Mike?”

A faint “yeah” answers her from the depths of the apartment, and she rolls her eyes, padding over the tiles to peek into the pot. He must be making soup again, since she’s been coughing this week. It’s ridiculous to be roommates with a hypochondriac, but even worse to be roommates with someone who’s constantly obsessing about _her_ health.

“More broth?” she calls, stirring the contents of the pot slowly with the ladle. “Isn’t this obnoxious?”

All she gets is a faint “uh, no” so she smiles to herself and washes her hands in the sink.

“Need help cutting?”

“No!” comes Mike’s voice, much louder, much closer, and she turns to see him ambling through the doorway, hand raised preemptively. “They have to be cubes.”

El gives him a look. “Or what? Can’t fit a hexagonal prism in your mouth?”

“Shush,” he tells her, bumping her out of the way with his hip. As he starts chopping the peppers, El pulls a bag of baby carrots from the fridge, crunching away as she watches him. He recalls his two newly assigned jobs to her, evading the details, but making sure she knows how top-secret they are, and all she does is roll her eyes at every dramatic pause.

“Like anyone in that building would risk harming a single baby hair on your head.”

“Oh, a _baby_ hair? I’m a _baby_? Would a _baby_ be able to chop like _this_?” he goads, amping up the speed of the knife’s falls, staring at her in challenge.

El rolls her eyes. “For fucks sake, keeps your eyes down! Can’t have the most prized agent of the eighteenth floor cutting off his own extremities.”

“I can do this while standing on one leg,” he brags anyway, lifting his foot behind him in a charming reenactment of the last minutes of many 90s romance movies.

“What’s missing from this scene?” El asks, hopping up onto a bar stool and watching him fondly.

Mike quiets as he thinks, dragging another pepper over and starting in on it. “Mm – music?”

El smiles, swiping through her phone to click on their favorite playlist, keeping it quiet enough that they can talk. “Good choice, but not what I’m looking for.”

“Spectators?”

“No.”

“An explosion.”

“The fuck, Mike, no.”

“Evil?”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’m evil the whole time. I’m chopping vegetables laced with arsenic, and I’m plotting to get rid of you. I start laughing maniacally as the stuff I injected into your baby carrots starts coursing through your system until you –“

El stands abruptly, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him down until their lips are pressed together. Mike hums into her mouth, dropping the knife to the counter and wrapping both of his arms so tightly around El that her feet come off the ground. She giggles, pulling back, still held in the air where she’s taller than she usually is. Mike’s eye-level with her, watching her with infatuation. “A kiss, Mike, that’s what was missing.”

One of Mike’s hands slithers up her back and pushes her head forward until she’s got her lips attached to his again, and they’re both laughing.

\--

**Hips Between Knees Kiss**

She’s sitting on the washing machine in the lowest level of the office building, waiting for the slow cycle to start so she can stop listening to the aggressive thud of hot metal jumping on the floor of their laundry room. The walls are slabs of stone and the floors aren’t much different, save for the single drain in the middle of the room in case, she figures, some random water pipe just plain detonates.

It’s not often that she uses these machines, but the grime on her training suits needs that extra kick that her home appliances simply don’t have.

Her banged-up phone is due for an upgrade, but she’s had no time between jobs to even think about going in for repairs. The bottom left corner of the screen is cracked, and she always swipes over it carefully for fear of instant bleeding. As it is, she’s watching cooking videos on YouTube and trying not to descend into an anxious mess from the loud, unpredictable clanging of the old weapons-grade machine whirring beneath her.

When the door at the end of the room swings open, she glances up in both trepidation and relief, sagging bodily when she sees Mike’s gangly form breeze through.

He drops his laundry basket on a neighboring machine, and El can see that it’s got only a couple items in it, before approaching her carefully. “Hopper, you okay?”

El sets her phone down beside her hip and blinks at him. The machine wobbles with the end of one cycle, and she feels silly, rocked by it like a baby. “Yeah?”

He lifts one hand and brushes his thumb right over her philtrum. When it comes away, it’s red. “You’ve got a nosebleed.”

Hands flying up to wipe at her face, El grows flustered, shocked that she hadn’t felt the trickle. Mike sticks a box of tissues in her hands and she hides behind five of them, eyes hot. “Just – stressed, sorry.”

“Yeah, I can tell. What with the three-hundred-year-old machine you’re using to wash the gunk out of your stuff. You, who’s so prissy about her cleaning that not even every broomstick will do.”

El smiles at him absentmindedly and shrugs. “Been a long week.”

“Blood on the suit, huh?”

El flushes. “He nicked me with the knife that I was supposed to kick out of his hand. We practiced the move seven times, and I still didn’t have my leg out properly.” At the look of growing fury spreading over Mike’s face, she adds, “My pride hurts more than the cut.”

“He shouldn’t ever ‘nick’ you with a sharp weapon. That’s not his fucking job.”

“He’s my _trainer_ , Mike.”

“So? My barber doesn’t teach me lessons about styling my hair by sliding a razor over my scalp.”

“Mike.”

“You looks pale and there’s blue bags under your eyes. You probably haven’t slept in days. This has to be reported –“

“Don’t you fucking dare,” El snaps, fingers instantly curling in the collar of Mike’s loose tee, teeth gritted as she forces him to look her in the eyes. “That’s not your right.”

The annoying thing about how tall Mike is lies in the way he’s looming over her even when she’s sitting a whole foot up on a washing machine. Her hand in his collar means nothing to him, even though his face looks tortured as he gently makes her unfurl her fingers from the material. “You’re going to kill yourself for them, going on like this.”

“And I’d do it gladly,” El tells him, eyes dark and serious. He seems pained to see it.

“You don’t owe them as much as you think.”

“You have no idea what I owe them.” When Mike moves to speak again, she cuts him off, “Aren’t you tired of having the same fight over and over again?”

Mike’s mouth shuts, and he crosses his arms. “My motivations are –“

“This isn’t about your motivations. It never is. My nosebleeds come and go, please don’t make it into a thing.”

Mike sighs deeply and paces away from her with his back turned, rubbing one hand up and down his face, and then paces back until his hips are between her knees, and he’s leaning on the edges of the washer that’s quieted down before the slow cycle begins. “You know your limits,” he intones, as a statement, but she can see the question in his eyes.

“I know my limits,” she confirms. She’s been weaker recently, a little off her footing, but she’s got a long way to go before she hits the ground.

Mike nods once, somberly, and looks down at her mouth.

A tingle zings up El’s spine, making her straighten, which brings their faces closer, and then she sets two careful hands on his shoulders, biding her time. “Are you about to kiss me?” she asks.

He shakes his head, like he can’t believe her nerve, and throws himself forward, putting his lips around hers and taking a ragged breath against her cheek. El opens her eyes and gazes at the long lashes caressing his cheeks, the furl of his brow that always means he’s hurting inside, and then wraps her arms around his neck. They kiss well into the slow cycle, and with the office clearing out for the holidays, there isn’t even the sound of voices in the entire length of the hallway outside the laundry room.

He worries a lot, because of how her team uses her, because of the dangers he’s familiar with, because of the way they met. He also knows the risks that she takes every day, even though he understands that she’s the only person in the entire task force who could take them at all. And he kisses her so well that sometimes she forgets.

He tastes of tangerines, like the detergent she started using a few months ago - and she files away the question of why she'd switched detergents at all for a different day.

Before her clothes are dry, she thinks she’s going to try to make him laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an attempt at illustrating, in written form, all the first-kiss cliches discussed in this [post. ](https://spaceshipkat.tumblr.com/post/188006054102)
> 
> My goal was to create a structure in which these could be read as one-off vignettes from separate plots, or a chronologically-sound story following the same characters from start to finish. I think, I hope, that I've succeeded in making both interpretations fairly realistic.
> 
> Happy holidays to you all! 🎄💖  
> I love this fandom with all my heart, and over the years of my presence here I have come to trust you guys more than I can say. I cannot repay the debt I owe you for supporting me when I didn't even know I needed support, and I miss you guys all the time.
> 
> “One day you will kiss a man you can't breathe without, and find that breath is of little consequence.”  
> ― Karen Marie Moning


End file.
